


not strictly research

by kickedshins



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Hate Kiss, Love/Hate, M/M, They Used To All Be Friends Back In Research..., canon-typical levels of sasha-centric angst, fanon-typical levels of timsasha-centric angst, ive never done cocaine but like i feel like it'd feel like this, jontim feels like i just did a fuckton of cocaine, set during episode 114 so a few lines are canon dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:20:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23490802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kickedshins/pseuds/kickedshins
Summary: “Because you need to learn when to quit talking. It doesn’t solve all of your problems. And you need to let yourself feel out loud. I’ve been feeling inside for too long, and after some time it builds up and it pressurizes everything and one day small fractures turn into broken pottery without you even realizing. Danny was my first crack. Sasha wasn’t my second. I’m pretty much split down the middle, and I don’t expect that to be fixed, but you’re not yet a lost cause. I know you’re a real person. Not like whatever she was, not like… Jesus. I know you’re real. You have to be real, because if you’re not real, then—” He sighs. “You’re real. Maybe you won’t end up exploding. And, yeah, I wish I could have gotten that chance, because, let’s be honest, I’m more deserving of sanity than you are, but, well, I think we’re pretty well past the point of that. So just do me one kindness and take my advice.”orTensions are very, very high, and Jon and Tim are both far too gone to actually resolve this.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims/Tim Stoker
Comments: 24
Kudos: 95





	not strictly research

**Author's Note:**

> jontim is so fucking. Jesus . [i stick my head out the window and scream]. also i was originally going to make this a fix-it fic and then realized that There's No Real Way To Do That once you get to this point. so here we are.
> 
> a few lines at the beginning are canon dialogue from the show, so if you recognize it, it sure as hell isn't mine

“I’m still me, Tim,” Jon insists. “I’m still me.”

  
Tim lets out a deep breath. Worries his lower lip with his teeth. Runs a hand through his hair.

“You know what?” he says bitterly, as if he hasn’t said  _ everything  _ bitterly for the past Jon-doesn’t-even-know-how-long. “You’re actually right.”

And that throws Jon for a loop. Of all the things Tim could have said, agreeing with Jon about, well, literally anything at this point is as jarring as a bucket of cold water poured directly over his head. “What?”

“You’re the only one.”

“Sorry,” Jon says. “I do-don’t follow.” After a moment, after no further elaboration, Jon prompts him again. “Tim?”

“Do you know why I avoid the others?”

“Uh, you said, the tapes…”

  
“No,” Tim says shortly. With acidity. “How can I be _sure_ who they are?”

  
“Oh…” Jon says, realization dawning. This isn’t about him. Not everything is always about him.

“You know how long that  _ thing  _ pretended to be Sasha? And I had  _ no  _ idea? I knew Sasha for  _ years _ , we…” 

And in that moment, Jon has a rare shock of absolute emotional clarity. This is what it looks like to care for someone. This is what it looks like to love someone. This is why it’s so very dangerous to give yourself away, because if that person dies, or if that person leaves, or if you lose them in any way, you lose a bit of yourself, too. And you can’t get that back. And Tim put too much of himself into Danny and still had enough trust in trust after everything that happened to give himself to Sasha and now he’s been cut down too brutally and too fast and two too many times and Jon feels like an idiot. A coward and an idiot. 

Tim sighs. “I don’t know Martin as well as I knew her,” he continues. “I barely know what Melanie and Basira  _ look  _ like. Or that weird murder-cop. How the hell am I supposed to be sure of any of them?”

Softly, Jon says, “Tim, I… I didn’t realize. I-I didn’t think.” He pauses to take in a deep breath and let it out slowly. And then he says the only thing he can: “I’m sorry.”

Tim doesn’t even acknowledge him. Instead, he barrels onwards, letting the words spill out of his mouth like an unrestrained waterfall, like… like a statement. “I mean, there’s worms and hallways and clowns, and… in some ways, it doesn’t even register. Like, just another spook. But I can’t  _ trust  _ them. I’m going to destroy the Circus that took my brother, and I can’t trust them to help.”

Jon feels like he’s long since passed the point of personal boundaries and generally not being a self-centered ass, so he asks, “And me?” Because he feels like maybe he should start learning to trust in trust, too. Because he’s hopeful that Tim still has enough of himself to lend away. Because this doesn’t have to be the end of the line for either of them, separate or together.

Tim looks like he’s holding in a scream. “You?”

“Can you trust me?” Jon tries not to put any force into the words, he really does. But he still sort of hopes that Tim is compelled when he lets out a curt laugh and shakes his head sharply.

“Not as far as I can throw you. Which, granted, is probably pretty far. You’re pathetically scrawny.”

“Not the first time I’ve heard that,” Jon mutters, which is true, because Georgie said it quite often when she was drunk back in his Uni days. And sometimes while sober, too.

“But at least I know you’re you. At least I have that,” Tim says with an exhausted sigh.

Jon wants to help, and he thinks that the best way to do that would be to rationalize the situation. After all, they’re academics. That’s what they should do, right? “I think,” he says carefully, “that we can easily make a case for the others being, er,  _ themselves _ too. And properly themselves, not in the way that Sasha was- that is to say, I mean that they’re—”

“Shut up,” Tim says.

“Beg your pardon.”

“Shut  _ up _ . Shut up shut up shut up just stop talking, Jesus, for once in your life, Jon, can you  _ stop talking _ .”

“Oh,” Jon says, taken aback. “I was only trying to help. I simply think that—”  
Tim cuts him off with the most depressingly loveless kiss that Jon has ever received. It’s short and angry and leaves Jon absolutely breathless.

“Well. Of course that’s your preferred method of quieting someone,” Jon says vehemently.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tim demands, as if he doesn’t know exactly what that’s supposed to mean.

“It means that you seem to spend a lot of time using your mouth for… for things that are not strictly research, if you know what I mean.”

Tim shrugs, all nonchalance, as if he hasn’t just kissed his boss. “It gets results, doesn’t it? And, besides, I think you’re overshooting my… I don’t even know. I don’t even know what you think I do, but, Jon?” Jon. Tim hasn’t called Jon by his name in a while. He leans in close, and Jon can see his chest rising and falling as he breathes heavily. “Let me tell you a little secret. Most of the time, I just talk to them.”

“Well, then,” Jon says, because he doesn’t have anything else to say. He just wants to get out of here. He wants to leave the tunnels and leave Tim and get away from all of this.

And he also wants to pull Tim back in and kiss him senseless and pretend like they might be able to be happy together, like they might be able to go back to the easy friendship and occasional pecks of their Research days, but, well, that’s not really relevant, is it? 

“I talk to them. And do you want to know why that works? Do you?” Jon’s pretty sure he doesn’t have a choice in the matter, so he says nothing, and Tim continues, “It’s because I’m a likable fucking person. It’s because I’m decent and warm and enjoyable and I’m funny and charming and people think I’m easy to talk to. Because I know how to talk to people, and I know how to let them talk to me. Because, to put it in the absolute simplest of terms, to make it clear enough that even  _ you  _ won’t be able to over-analyze it, I’m not awful. Because I possess the capacity for empathy. Empathy, Jonathan. People like me and they don’t like you and that’s the way I use my mouth for things that are—what did you call it?—not strictly research. I use my mouth to make emotional fucking connections. With people like filing clerks. With people like statement givers. With people like  _ Sasha _ . And you’re jealous of it.” He shrugs. “What a shame.”

Jon stands there with his mouth hanging just a little open for a second or two. Jealous. “Why the hell would you think that?”

Tim laughs humorlessly. “It’s pretty clear. You’ve only ever been tolerated, and you want to be wanted by someone other than Martin Blackwood, because,  _ Jon,  _ you’re a real dick, and you don’t appreciate him. You don’t appreciate me. You stalked me and didn’t trust me and destroyed the relationship we’d built up through our time in Research. Maybe if you hadn’t got such a massive complex about everything, we’d still be able to have what we had back then.” He gives Jon absolutely zero seconds to respond before barrelling onwards. “And you didn’t appreciate Sasha when she was around, even though she wanted to be your friend.”

“I appreciated Sasha!” Jon insists. He’s going to take this one at a time, because if he tries to do it any other way he might go markedly more crazy than he already feels, and the claim about Sasha, quite frankly, seems the most easy to dispute. “I did. Listen to any one of the tapes where I mention her work during my notes. There was never a time where I blew off her information, or doubted her sources, or wasn’t appreciative of the work she did for me.”

“Fucking hell, that’s all we are to you, aren’t we? Expendable little machines that you can wind up and up and up until we either get snatched up by some hellish creature or until we snap.” His eyes do not have enough light in them.

“You’re not machines, and you’re certainly not expendable.”

“That’s how you treat us, though! That’s how you treat us. Sure, whatever, you could go on ad damn nauseum about how Sasha was a right proper Pulitzer prize winner of a writer, but I’d bet half my bank account you don’t know her favorite color.”

“I don’t need your ten quid,” Jon says snidely.

“You need a haircut and to eat something that’ll maybe retroactively prevent scurvy, so, yes, you do.”

“Besides,” Jon says, ignoring Tim’s dig, “you wouldn’t know her favorite color either. Not really, at least.”

Tim levels his gaze. Balls his hands into fists. Breathes out slowly between his teeth. “Do not,” he says, “imply that you knew her like I did.”

“But it’s impossible to be sure,” Jon insists. “I know you’re convinced that the two of you were in love, or something, because you trailed her like a three-legged puppy dog after you gave up on trying to have something with me more than kissing me sometimes back when we were in Research, but that’s all just your imagination, Tim.”

“You’re making an extremely tempting offer for me to punch you,” Tim says, voice bright and cheery like it used to be a year ago, except now the sweetness makes Jon’s teeth ache with regret rather than annoyance. He should have appreciated every flirtatious grin or candied comment, and now he’ll likely never have the opportunity to. “All I’m convinced of is that I saw her as a person, and not just a worker bee, and I was her friend, and when she was taken from me, I didn’t even realize, and now I can’t be sure about Martin or Melanie or the damn police, and all I know is you’re the same asshole you’ve always been, and I hate how grateful I am for that.”

“I’m– I’m sorry,” Jon says. He doesn’t know what else there is to say. “I wish I could fix this, somehow.”

“You wish. So do I. I wish a lot of things, you know? I wish Martin would hate you, but he’s still caught up in the idea that this’ll all get better and that one day you’ll accept the cup of tea he makes for you and you’ll give him a magical kiss and fly off to Fairyland or something and live happily ever after.” Tim’s face twists into a mean grimace. “I wish you actually did appreciate us, because you don’t. Not well enough. And I wish Sasha hadn’t– I wish. Yeah. Yeah, I wish, too.”

Absurdly, Jon fixates on a very specific part of Tim’s exhalation of rage. “Kiss?”

“What?”

“You said something about Martin and a magical kiss.”

“Please do not tell me you don’t know,” Tim groans.

“Don’t know what?”

“Martin, for whatever reason, has a massive thing for you.” At Jon’s look, he laughs again, and this time it seems like there might actually be some life in his voice. “I know, I know. Ridiculous. Especially when I’m a more than viable option to fall for. And it’s not like I didn’t flirt, even after you decided that a boss-assistant relationship would be completely inappropriate,” he snorts.

“Yes, you seem to do that quite a lot,” Jon says dryly, letting himself forget, for just a moment, that they’re not friends who joke around any longer.

And then Jon remembers another thing about Tim and kissing and goes very quiet and something must pass across his face because Tim raises an eyebrow, just one, and Jon could swear he does it almost playfully.

Jon’s throat feels dry. “Why did you do that.”

“I don’t need to tell you anything.”

Jon says, “I could make you.”

Tim says, “I don’t think magical words could stop me from breaking your nose.”

Jon says, “I won’t make you.”

“I don’t think,” Tim starts, showing more restraint and hesitation than Jon has seen him express in a long time, “that you would have done it. Make me tell you, that is.”

“I think I might have. I’m not exactly– I mean, it’s hard to control, and while I’m trying, I’m not historically the best at reigning it in. Furthermore, you said that I don’t respect you, or appreciate you as anything other than a machine, and that’s not true, I know it isn’t, but sometimes it’s like I’m not sure where my values end and the insanity of this place begins, so—”

Tim presses another kiss to his lips. Not soft, exactly; it’s still certainly entirely for the purpose of shutting him up. But there’s a bit more care to it, a bit more understanding, a bit more of something that isn’t yet an apology, but it very well might be pity. Which is a step above anger, at least, but Jon worries that pity won’t last long.

It ends faster than Jon would have liked. “And what was that one for, exactly?”

“Because,” Tim begins to explain, exasperated.

“Because?”

“Because you need to learn when to quit talking. It doesn’t solve all of your problems. And you need to let yourself feel out loud. I’ve been feeling inside for too long, and after some time it builds up and it pressurizes everything and one day small fractures turn into broken pottery without you even realizing. Danny was my first crack. Sasha wasn’t my second. I’m pretty much split down the middle, and I don’t expect that to be fixed, but you’re not yet a lost cause. I know you’re a real person. Not like whatever she was, not like… Jesus. I know you’re real. You have to be real, because if you’re not real, then—” He sighs. “You’re real. Maybe you won’t end up exploding. And, yeah, I wish I could have gotten that chance, because, let’s be honest, I’m more deserving of sanity than you are, but, well, I think we’re pretty well past the point of that. So just do me one kindness and take my advice.” 

Jon lets out a long, low sigh. “I just– Tim, look.”

“Eyes wide open,” Tim says flatly.

“It’s not something I can quit. If–if I quit, then it kills me. I think it kills me. Or, I mean, it feels that way. I don’t– it’s so  _ confusing _ , and, Christ, I wish more than anyone that I could keep my mouth closed sometimes. There’s just something that’s forcing me into this role, pushing me down this path, and I’m not sure how much my feet are moving of my own accord or because someone—something—else is tugging at the strings.”

“Okay,” Tim says, “but you know that’s no excuse for being a real dickhead, right?”

Jon runs a hand through his hair. It’s been getting long, too long, but he’s busy enough that cutting it always seems to slip his mind. “I know,” he says. “I know it’s not an excuse. Can it, at the very least, be an explanation?”

“It can try to be one,” Tim says. 

“And may I say that I’m sorry?”

Tim laughs, short and sharp. “For the tenth time today? Well, I’m not going to stop you.” He leans back against the wall, shoulders slumping, head dropping. There’s this beautiful mask he’s worn for years, and now that it’s slipping from his face, what lies underneath is as entrancing as it is hideous. Mean and vindictive and an emotional beartrap of a revenge plan and utterly intoxicating. 

Jon thinks, not for the first time, that he might have a bit of an issue with throwing himself into situations where he’s certainly going to get hurt.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Fan–fucking–tastic.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I don’t want the world to end without you understanding how sorry I am.”

“And I don’t want the world to end at all, but beggars can’t be choosers, can they? Look, you can keep saying sorry, and I can keep not accepting your apology. I feel bad for you, sure, but that doesn’t mean I have to let bygones be bygones, or whatever. I don’t have to take you back. There are some bridges that are better off as ash, and I think I threw the fire extinguisher out with some of my trash that you spent months digging through to try and frame me as a murderer.”

Jon lets out a frustrated groan. “Why are you– for fuck’s sake, Tim, a few minutes ago you were kissing me, and now you’re acting as if none of this conversation happened.”

Tim pushes off the wall and stalks over. He’s a few inches taller than Jon, and more than a few inches broader, and Jon is mildly terrified, but he stands his ground. There’s something telling him that if he backs away now, he will never have the opportunity to make this right.

“Would you rather I was doing that?”

The air between them is heavy. Jon’s overcome with the desire to adjust his glasses. “To be frank, yes, I would. Because that, at least, felt like… well, old times, I suppose.”

  
Tim’s laugh is kerosine on a log, the strike of flint against steel. “Old times was happy, Jon.”

  
“It’s been a few years since last you kissed me. Forgive me for drawing up associations.”

  
Tim says, “This isn’t going to make things better between us.”

Jon says, “It’s not as if it can make things worse, though.”

Tim’s a forest fire, a lightning strike, a ship blown to bits while still locked at port, and Jon’s lucky enough to get caught in the crossfire. He feels his desk against his back as Tim pushes against him, an unstoppable force. His hand finds its way into Tim’s hair and his glasses end up on the floor but he can’t bring himself to care because Tim is kissing him again and it feels like a bitter goodbye.

Tim’s thumb rubs against one of the scars on Jon’s cheekbone. “Fuck this place,” he says against Jon’s mouth.

Jon wishes he could readily return the sentiment. Instead, he tugs Tim back towards him and tries to say he’s sorry without using his words.

He’s never been fantastic at communication, verbal or otherwise.

And he knows that Tim is planning on dying soon and he knows that Tim’s usually very good at getting things done when he sets his mind to it and he knows that three kisses and some shouted words won’t even begin to ford this raging river between them, but for a few minutes, he can pretend, against all his common sense and better judgment and the voice in the back of his mind that tells him things he’d likely be better off not knowing, that it’s going to be a start.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! kudos/comments always appreciated, or find me @ commaperson on twitter :-)


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